Nadine Gordimer

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Nadine Gordimer
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About the Author

• Nadine Gordimer was born in the Transvaal, South
  Africa in 1923
• Wrote her first short story at 15 at the
  University of Witwatersrand
• Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991
• Her mother was British and her father was Jewish
• Her writings were based on the psychological
  tensions of racism between blacks and whites
• Nadine Gordimer is still living in South, Africa
  writing short stories and novels.

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Some of her work

• Some of her best novels Burgers Daughter, The
  Conservationist-1975, My Sons Story-1991
• One recent novel, The House Gun-1998
• Living in Hope and HistoryNotes from our Century

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Short Stories

• Six Feet of the Country-1956, Fridays
  Footprint-1960,
• A Soldiers Embrace-1980
• Her most recent short story collection is
  Jump-1992

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Achievements

• Nobel Prize in Literature, 1991, Sweden
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 1972, England
• Bennett Award, 1987, USA

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Her Themes Concerns

• Her writing illustrates the need for political
  change and, more generally, the dynamics at the
  intersection of public and private life. But it
  is the combination of these qualities with her
  immense storytelling skills and the power with
  which she addresses such universal themes as
  responsibility, freedom, and the nature of love
  that has won her a reputation as one of the
  worlds great writers. GreatBooks.org

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Her Own Voice

• Çlips from an Interview on the BBC
• http//www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profi
  lepages/gordimern1.shtml

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The Pickup

• By Nadine Gordimer

By Sophia Bassouls
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Short Reviews

• Gordimer does not invite easy affection for her
  characters, and her prose can be as dauntingly
  dense as it is elegant. Her passion is for the
  truth, and the pleasure of reading her, as
  always, lies in her detailed, dead-on
  observations of personal interactions and the
  social structures that shape them. Kirkus Review
• For Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Prize winning
  South African author, the complexities of 'the
  Other' have always been at the centre of her
  interest. Having grown up in a post-colonial
  South Africa and lived through the various stages
  of its apartheit regime, she always made it one
  of her tasks to analyse what this radical form of
  institutionalised 'othering' did to people and
  their cultures. Franz Meier

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The Pickup

• Do we believe the characters grow and change in
  this novel?
• Why did Gordimer take Julie and Ibrihim from
  South Africa to his desert country?
• What do you most like about the tone/style/pace
  of the novel?
• What was most challenging about the voice and
  style of this novel?

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Sources
ltwww.kirjasto.sci.fi/gordimer.htmgt Meier, Franz.
Picking up the Other Nadine Gordimers The
Pickup. EESE, 2003, May 24,06
lthttp//webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic23/franz/
2_2003.htmlgt
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What would you say to Julie if you met her in
bar right after she met Ibrahim again when
she returned for a visit home to South Africa if
she appeared again at the EL-Ay table to talk
with her friends?

• Question for discussion?